"Well, two things," she said. "First; unless I loved him—oh, if I only could! How I would love him! And if not that—well, for—for—it would have to be compensation of another kind, such as great wealth, and all that, to have a great name like that of the Countess of Carfax." "The Countess of Carfax?" I asked. She was looking at me very earnestly. I felt her eyes on my face. Something unpleasant began to dawn upon me. "Jack, I cannot deceive you. I do not, I cannot love anyone that way—that one sweet way. It is not in me. I might have loved you that way, Jack, it is the truth, but Aunt Lucretia has thwarted the chance you had with me, with her blooded stock idea of it. That is why I’ve treated you so all my life; it was not I, it was Love resenting this profanity of itself." I could not speak. Eloise, I saw, had much to tell that I did not know. "Four years is a long time to be away, and after you left I was so lonely, I had no comrade, no Little Brother in my summer vacations. And you were far away, and Colonel Goff—you know how queerly he has always persisted in wanting to marry me some day—not quite as bad as Aunt Lucretia’s way, but almost as bad—because, well, I think for no other reason than because I ride well—" she was speaking brokenly. "Aunt Lucretia wants me to marry you because I’ve got a good pedigree, and Colonel Goff wants me to marry him because I ride well, but I want to marry someone because I love him. You know how grandfather is about Colonel Goff, Jack? Oh, I can’t tell it all, but he has made it so unpleasant for me since you left, worrying me about—that I should marry Colonel Goff—that I had nothing, and how great a man Colonel Goff was—and—oh, he has seemed to become childish of late, so irritable and strange, and so he has almost driven me away from home or into marrying Colonel Goff; and you were far away, Jack. And so when Colonel Goff—well, he was as persistent as grandfather, and so kind always and good to me—Jack, you see how I was placed between them—" "Well?" I said bitterly, "go on." "And so when Colonel Goff asked me, I—" The great trees above me seemed to reel, and my heart to stop, and then thump fiercely in my throat. "Eloise, please don’t," I begged. "Do you—you don’t love that man!" "Of course not," she answered coolly, and very quietly, "but—and this is my secret, Jack. Promise me—it isn’t known yet, but it will be before long. You know since he came home from the war with grandfather and lived here he has been at outs with his people in England. You know how he had to leave them. Well, it seems that all of his brothers over there have died but one, and that Colonel Goff is next heir, and that he has received a letter from the physician asking him to come and see his brother before he dies, that he wants to arrange about the estates, for they are large, and the brother is the Earl of Carfax." I had dropped her hand, and my head was bent. I knew what was coming.